The Avonhead Post Office

Imagine that you really really didn’t like talking to new people. Imagine that you had worked in retail and ever since you projected your own hatred of customers onto all the people whose shops or businesses you entered. Imagine if instead of thinking that the grass was always greener in someone else’s yard, you spent all your time in other people’s yards thinking that really your own grass was really pretty good and that the time spent away from that grass was a bit of a waste.

If, like me, you did all those things you’d probably be a) screwed up and b) making regular visits to the Avonhead Post Office to collect your mail. Note that I said you’d be screwed up, not that I’d be screwed up. I’m used to it.

I happened upon the Avonhead Post Office by chance. It’s not in an especially convenient location, although it’s not far from the highway out of town near the edge of Christchurch, so it could be a lot worse. When I bought my car, the previous owner and I drove across town to a mechanic’s workshop quite close to the Avonhead shopping centre, and after the mechanic had decided that all was well with the car we went to the Avonhead Post Office to fill in the rego paperwork. Because I filed the paperwork there and I’ve got no fixed address over here I directed the return mail for the car registration process to be held at the counter. Once I had some mail waiting there it made sense to direct my other mail there to collect, and now I’m something of a regular.

OK, so it’s all making sense at this stage. Except that really the Avonhead Post Office is not very convenient at all. It would be much better to have my mail held in central Christchurch near the big supermarkets and youth hostels and Laundromats etc. But of course, I can’t change post offices now. For a start, going to a new post office would mean talking to the staff at a new post office. It’s natural to assume that the staff at the new post office would hate me, since in my experience it’s natural for any staff member to automatically despise the customers or clients they interact with. I know what you’re thinking – according to this logic the staff at Avonhead already hate me. But if this logic is correct and I change post offices I’ll be resented by staff at BOTH locations. The new post office people will roll their eyes and groan inwardly at my approach, while the staff at Avonhead will start trading stories about “that weird guy that used to come in with the panda tan” until I’m a figure of reviled legend. By staying at Avonhead I save another entire post office from having to deal with another customer. And finally, I know Avonhead. I know that there’s a passable sushi place in the same shopping mall. I know that the post office also doubles as a bookstore that seems to specialise in biographies of ambiguously famous sportspeople. I know that the staff will actually hold onto my mail and will give it to me if I request it.

Well, at least I thought that the staff would hold onto my mail. However, a letter I’ve been waiting for from the New Zealand Snowsports Instructor’s Alliance hasn’t arrived. This could mean one of two things. Either the Avonhead post office has decided that they’re sick of the guy with the panda tan or the NZSIA has decided that maybe I shouldn’t have passed that instructor’s course. Both would be fair enough.

Newton’s First Law

---Warning: The following post is even less relevant to actual life than the standard you may have come to expect from this blog.---

The problem with physics is that as soon as you vaguely understand something it turns out to be wrong, and to understand the updated theory you need to master some mind-bendingly difficult new type of mathematics. Somewhere along the line in this process I suspect that physicists themselves have actually lost track of trying to make sense of the world and have basically accepted that the maths is as good as their theories will get. A few thousand years ago, physics worked like this:

Layman: I dropped a biscuit on a rock and it broke in two. Explain this to me, wise and noble physicist.

Physicist: Hmmm, physics isn’t likely to be invented for some time. In the absence of a real explanation, I’m going with “God probably doesn’t like your biscuit”.

Of course, as time went by and people got more and more into inventing things, someone realised that without physics no one would ever invent the ski-doo. With this motivation in mind people got stuck into physics. As such, a bit over a hundred years ago physics worked like this:

Layman: I dropped a biscuit on a rock and it broke in two. Explain this to me, wise and noble physicist.

Physicist: Gravity pulled the biscuit into the rock, and the energy of the collision broke your biscuit in two. Here’s a detailed and effective mathematic description of the whole shebang.

This is pretty much enough physics to invent the ski-doo, and that has kept people happy for a long time. After all, having a ski-doo is basically the best thing that can happen to you. However, someone got it into their head that they wanted a ski-doo that could solve the reverse phone book problem in a computationally efficient way, so physicists had to work out quantum mechanics. This resulted in a new type of physical explanation.

Layman: I dropped a biscuit on a rock and it broke in two. Explain this to me, wise and noble physicist.

Physicist: Well, there’s a biscuit, see. And a rock. And quantum mechanics something something something.

The frustrating part of this new type of physics is that it doesn’t actually explain anything. The old physics was wonderfully intuitive and made sense to people. It was all about pushing and pulling and colliding and other tragic accidents that happened to people’s ex-wives. The new physics was all about equations and waves and particles and stuff people didn’t really care about. Physicists might claim to understand these things in a way that makes “quantum mechanics something something something” a sensible explanation, but I reckon they’ve basically substituted explaining how things happen for mathematical descriptions of what’s just about to happen. Physicists will probably deny this, but baseless slander is a big part of what this blog is about, so let’s not think too hard about that. Anyway, by this stage physics was on a roll. Nowadays physicists explain things like this:

Layman: I dropped a laboured example on a rock and it broke in two. Explain this to me man who wears shorts with large pockets to work in every season.

Physicist: In order to answer this question I will need a significantly larger and more expensive machine than anyone in the world currently has. Until I own the largest and shiniest machine known to humankind I will be unable to assist you.

The moral to this story is that reading this blog is a complete waste of your time. It is, however, vaguely relevant to my current situation. You see, Newton’s First Law of Motion is that any body will continue to move at a constant velocity (or remain at rest) unless acted on by a force. That is, stuff tends to keep doing what it’s doing unless there’s a good reason for it do something else.

Tonight, as I mark the end of my third week in White Star Chalet, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on the truth of Newton’s First Law, despite the dubious improvements of physics since the time of the old dodger.

The first week of my time here was Oldies Week, which was too good to miss. Then we got a few nights of snow and clear days which made for skiing too good to miss. After that I really intended to go to Mt Olympus, I really did. But then I got the plague, and spent a few days fevering it up and manufacturing vast quantities of gratuitous mucus. I got that out of the way, but I didn’t eat much during that time and it stretched out my food supplies, so I stayed up here until my food ran out. Then I had to come back because there was a BBQ cook-off competition that sounded fun, and now I can’t leave because I’ve somehow ended up being hut mum for a bunch of high school kids from Queensland on a school camp.

I had great intentions, but somehow it just didn’t work out. At least now I’m being honest. Now when people ask how long I’ll be here and I say “Well, my flight out is on the 4^th of October”. It may not be pretty, but it closely approximates being honest.

All Hail the Monoboard

What’s wrong with this picture?

That’s right folks, I’m on a monoboard.

Not convinced?

There you have it people, the monoboard.

I have a confession to make. Despite great expectations, having now actually used a monoboard I can tell you that they’re all wrong. This is probably a good outcome, since becoming a serial monoboarder is probably more than I’m ready for at this stage in life. Far from being love at first sight, riding the mono was a deeply alienating experience. It seems that either you master the board, or the board masters you. For me, it was certainly the latter.

Pros:

• It is a monoboard (which turns out to be even less of a pro than first hypothesised)

Cons:

• You can’t turn.
• It does the exact opposite of what you want it to do, right up until you start relying on it doing that. Then it starts going straight downhill.
• It really does take all the best bits of skiing and replace them with the worst bits of snowboarding.
• On a flat surface it is pretty much impossible to move.
• On a rope tow, it has an alarming tendency to funnel your head towards pulleys.

Riding the monoboard has simultaneously reduced my respect for monoboards and greatly increased my respect for monoboarders. And so I’d like to take this moment to publicly recognise the Master of the Mono, the Undisputed Lord of the Board, John Newell. John, those of us who have been subjugated by the single ski salute you.

Imminent Changes

I just confirmed some changes to my flights that will put my back in Australia from the 4th to the 10th of October. After that I'm heading to Los Angeles then north to Canada. It sounds like the lure of dirtbaggery at Red Mountain is going to win the battle for my affections for the next few months.

I have some important messages for those of you at home that it's best I make clear now.

1) I have a google tan.


No, it's not some kind of weird facial disease. Yes, I realise it's pretty bad. Hopefully with a few days to get used to this idea you'll all be OK with it when I arrive and we won't need to go over it in detail every time I see someone.

2) Yes I really did go skiing here THE WHOLE TIME. No, I didn't visit volcanoes or have moving cultural experiences.

3) No, I'm not going to Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships. Not even a little tiny bit. Unless it snows in Melbourne.

4) If I don't get time to see everyone, you can rest assured that I've prioritised the people I do get to see in minute detail and that you missing out means you're a long way down on the list of things I care about. It has nothing at all to do with me being disorganised and suffering from a weird facial disease.

5) Unfortunately, I'm not coming home with the hat in that photo.

Important Differences Between Australia and New Zealand part 3:

14) In New Zealand, you are likely to drink spirits from a wee cup. In Australia, you would not drink anything from a wee cup.

15) In Australia, there is no single meat product that you could eat for all three meals in a day without being considered odd. In New Zealand, there is such a meat product and it is sausages.

16) In Australia, people are supposed to be impressed if you say you have convict heritage. In New Zealand convict heritage does not invite respect.

17) In Australia, if you wear stripy thermal tights with a long raincoat over the top (just long enough to make it ambiguous as to whether you are wearing shorts), people will keep you away from their children. In New Zealand, if you wear such an outfit you are likely to be a school teacher on a class excursion and thus surrounded by kids.

18) In Australia, if you sell your farm, you are probably giving up farming forever. In New Zealand, if you sell your farm you are probably going to use the money to buy a bigger farm.

19) In Australia, Home and Away is on at 7:30. In New Zealand, it is on at 5:30.

20) In Australia, one of our biggest exports is digging things out of the ground and selling them to people, like coal. In New Zealand, one of the biggest exports is digging things out of the ground and selling them to people, like carrots.

Where to from here

The end of my time in New Zealand inches ever closer. I have flights booked from Auckland to Los Angeles with a week-long stopover in Sydney departing in mid October, but it looks like those plans might need to change.

For a start it’s terrible timing with Mica, and since that’s the main reason for stopping over it’s worth changing. It also looks like the season here might end early. They have had a pretty warm start to spring and unless there’s a big dump to fill in the gaps the cover will probably melt out around the start of October.

It also looks like some of the ski areas I’m thinking of working at in Canada hire staff earlier than I thought. I was assuming that all the fields would hire at much the same time, and the employment information for Red Mountain says that positions are advertised in mid October. It turns out that other fields (like Revelstoke) have already started advertising for seasonal workers.

At present, I’m thinking about three different fields: Revelstoke, Red Mountain and Silverstar.

Revelstoke has only been around for a few years. It’s big – it’s got the largest vertical drop in North America at around 1700m. It also gets epic snow and is renowned for having heaps of good terrain. However, it also has a reputation for being pretty busy with a strong party vibe.

Red Mountain sounds awesome. No one can tell me exactly why it’s so good, but everytime I mention Red someone starts raving about it. I have literally never heard a bad comment about the field. It’s also quiet and the nearby town is supposed to be small and friendly.

Silverstar is a pretty big field and I normally wouldn’t think of heading there, but it sounds like some of the folks from BR will be heading over there and it would be nice to have a few contacts wherever I end up.

I suck at making decisions like this at the best of times, but this choice is compounded by a number of conflicting priorities:

Skiing:

Normally I’m drawn to places with big vertical drops. It makes for awesome bragging rights and you can scoff at other people’s puny ski fields. Plus, I have an irrational belief that skiing on a big hill will make me fitter. This would point me towards Revelstoke. There is, however, a certain problem with the connection between skiing fitness and quad size. Skiing at a big field and getting fitter means bigger quads. Unfortunately, the additional volume that makes up my quads is just coming from other parts of my body, rather than being new biomass. There is a physical limit to how big my quads can become before the rest of me wastes away or my legs explode.

Busyness:

The less busy the better. There actually isn’t any conflict here.

People:

If people and I were a couple on Facebook our status would be “It’s complicated”. Any interaction I have with new people a race against time. At some point they’ll work out that I’m a terrible person. Every moment before that happens I have to try to be nice, and every moment after that happens is awkward and weird. It’s exhausting being nice to people, so often it’s easier to just be a hermit and avoid human contact. If I go to Silverstar I’ll already know maybe three people, which is well and truly enough. With any luck I could probably avoid having to meet or speak to any new people which would be awesome. However, I’ve already known these people for a few weeks and they could figure out that I’m terrible person any moment now.

Work:

Jobs in Canada pay a pittance and take up time that should be rightfully spent skiing. On the other hand, they provide money and contacts in the local scene. I could probably stretch out my monies for the season without having to work, but it would mean coming home broke and having to find a real job. From what I’ve heard of the fallout after I left my last real job, that’s probably not a good idea for me or whoever makes the mistake of employing me. A good job opportunity would strongly influence where I end up if there are any good job opportunities for people with no useful skills.

After the winter I’ve got no plans. I have a flight back to Australia, but I also have a two year work visa for Canada, and the flight to Australia actually continues from Sydney to Auckland and I did promise one of the guys here I’d go to a dance party called ‘Shroom Doom. We’ll see.